Bjorn Yang-Vaernet examines which players on the waiver wire are worth prioritizing for Week 9 and highlights others to stash preemptively.
Week 8 was really satisfying from a fantasy perspective. Many of the big-name fantasy players were the ones to put up huge scores on the day. Here are just the players to put up more than 30 PPR fantasy points on the day:
- Alvin Kamara – 42.8
- Christian McCaffrey – 40.3
- AJ Brown – 39.6
- Derrick Henry – 35.8
- DeAndre Hopkins – 33.9
- Tony Pollard – 33.7
- D’Onta Foreman – 31.8
- Tyreek Hill – 31.5
- Jaylen Waddle – 30.6
Tucked among these big names was D’Onta Foreman, a player that could be had off the waiver wire three weeks ago. The importance of keeping up with the players available in your league can pay big dividends. With that in mind, let’s look at who is available for Week 9.
The waiver wire is one of the most important pieces of season-long draft leagues. It is the easiest way to acquire new players and every year there are gems to be found. The goal of this article will not only be to highlight which weekly breakout players to prioritize but find others to preemptively pick up before the breakout happens.
This article will be published once on Mondays with a quick run through my favorite pickups and again on Tuesdays with more charts and data points added in.
This article will only reference players that are less than 50% owned in ESPN leagues. The players are categorized by position group and within each group is the order of how I would prioritize them. In lieu of free agent acquisition budget percentages, which are highly dependent on the makeup of each league, I have highlighted which players I would prioritize on the week.
Quarterback
Justin Fields (Available in 74% of Leagues)
The Chicago coaching staff finally realized what they have in Justin Fields and started to utilize him more in the run game, which in turn, has opened up the passing game a little bit more. Fields has run for 60 or more yards in each of the past three games and scored a rushing TD in two. In comparison, from Weeks 1 to 5, he averaged 39 rush yards and had just one TD. On the passing side, Fields has had three straight games of 20 passing attempts or more and at least one passing TD in each. Altogether, Fields produced fantasy scores of 18.4, 23.4, and 26.0 during the last three weeks, respectively. This is much greater than his average of 10.9 points in the first five weeks.
Fields has a great upcoming schedule during the next four weeks: Miami, Detroit, at Atlanta, at New York Jets. Per the strength of schedule streaming app, Chicago has the second-easiest schedule for QBs during the next four weeks.
